This weekend marked the second anniversary of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN). Shortly after its launch, I rejoined AEI to serve as CERN’s director and could not be more proud of the work that our team has done thus far.

When we began building the network, some of our friends inside the beltway wondered whether we could really find more than a couple hundred serious-minded, right-leaning people with a professional interest in education policy. But what started as a community of 90 members has grown to over 700, across all 50 states and a few other countries.

In keeping with AEI’s emphasis on a competition of ideas, CERN has not aimed to advance a particular agenda or argue for a particular vision of education reform. Rather, we have aimed to provide a big tent for a variety of dispositions and approaches on the right, and to foster a connective tissue and sense of belonging for the oftentimes beleaguered folks of our persuasion. Through our briefings and newsletters, we provide opportunities for our members to connect with each other and some of America’s leading conservative education policy figures. Some exciting policy initiatives have come to fruition due to connections made through our private briefings.

We have also leveraged our membership to produce the “Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda” series, which has grown steadily to provide 48 concrete ideas that could improve American education. Some, such as academic transparency, have caught fire across the country. Others, such as launching a new accreditor for startup colleges, might have to wait until conservatives are back in the Department of Education to see a chance of coming to fruition. But all have enriched the options available to conservative education reformers and put forth a positive vision of what conservatives are for when it comes to education policy.

We have sought to platform leading reformers through our “Ed the Right Way” public event series, featuring leaders like Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee Virginia Foxx, former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, and Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera. And we’ll continue to extend an open invitation to policymakers to share their positive vision for conservative education reform.

And for the first time during the decade I have been involved with education policy, it truly does feel as though there is a conservative movement in the field. Part of this has, of course, been in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, and excesses of the left and the Biden administration. But much of it has been due to the entrance of new players with exciting and constructive policy agendas. From the federal to state to local levels, from issues ranging from school choice to school board election timing, there seems to be a greater sense of mission and teamwork than I’ve witnessed before in the space. And while I’d love to say that CERN could take credit for that, the truth is that we’re humbled to simply play a role in fostering and facilitating the great work of others. We’re looking forward to what the future has in store!

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